Since Mudd's death, historians have argued over Mudd's innocence, and many of his descendants have tried to restore his reputation. In 1990 the doctor's grandson Richard Dyer Mudd requested that Mudd's case be reviewed by the Army Board of Correction of Military Records, which two years later recommended that the conviction be removed from army records because he was tried improperly, before a military commission instead of in civilian court. The recommendation was rebuffed by army administration, and in 1997 Richard Mudd brought the issue before the U.S.

Radical action was central to Higginson's efforts. His unequivocal opposition to the fugitive slave law was evident as he participated in freeing fugitive slave Thomas Sims and participating in attacking the Boston Courthouse, where fugitive slave Anthony Burns was held. Recruiting and leading armed men to the Kansas territory after passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), Higginson helped organize the Massachusetts Kansas Aid Committee, the militant arm of the Emigrant Aid Society.

The freckle-faced Carson was short, weighing only 145 pounds in his prime, and was both bow-legged and pigeon-toed, the very opposite of his image in dime novels. Although he was not pious like Jed Smith, he was unlike most mountain men in that he was temperate in the use of alcohol and profanity, although he was addicted to tobacco. He was soft-voiced, reticent, and genuinely modest in contrast to such braggarts as Jim Bridger.

Charles Collins was born on April 17, 1813 in North Yarmouth, Maine to Joseph Warren and Hannah Sturdivant Collins.  At the age of fourteen he became a member of the Church of Christ and went on to prepare for college at the Maine Wesleyan Seminary. He then entered Wesleyan University and graduated with the highest honors in his class in 1837, as well as Phi Beta Kappa honors.  Following his graduation he took a job as the principal of a high school in Augusta, Maine for one year.

Herndon read law with Lincoln and his partner, Stephen T. Logan. Lincoln and Herndon became law partners almost immediately after Herndon was admitted to the Illinois bar in December 1844. Their partnership lasted until 1861 when Lincoln left for Washington to become president.